Fools Rule: On Göggle-eyed Göds & Monsters

The Mona Lisa Has No Eyebrows

But she’s still obviously quite effective, face-wise.

There’s all this panicked talk about how we need another striker, in case our current one goes on le blink. It seems the loud and unwashed masses are not comfortable with any of our current alternatives.

Perhaps eyebrows are over-rated? They don’t serve any real purpose, except for frowning. And besides – Barca have managed pretty well without an eyebrow. Yes – you say – but they have the monobrowed monarch Messi…

Well. We’ve got the göggle-eyed göd, Mesut.

Jokes aside. Strikers are pretty expensive. They’re like sports cars. Sports cars have nowhere to put their baggage. And they break down a lot.

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Speaking of göggle-eyed göds… Did you know, butterflies taste with their feet? Watching our star signing in action, I can’t help thinking that he’s a bit butterflyish in that way. In fact – we have a couple of players whose footwork is pretty tasty.

Am looking forward to the return of Locust Podolski and his magnificent leg muscles – strongest in the Animal Kingdom, I’m led to believe. Muhammad Ali: you’ve got nothing on Arsenal, mate. Even our B-team can sting.

For those of you who ‘want your Arsenal back’… did you know that Coca-Cola was originally green? I, for one, am personally quite glad that we are no longer plying our trade on a pitch that apparently had an open sewer running through it.

As Heraclitus once said:

“A man cannot step into the same river twice.”

I ask you this: if the river was full of shit – why would you want to cross it again? Or is it a different Coke you’re nostalgic for?

Be specific.

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I sometimes wonder if ‘supporters’ who can justify wishing failure upon their team aren’t perhaps a little screw-loose-ish. Opinions are like arseholes. Everybody has one. But, as Douglas Adams pointed out:

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”

That said, be wary of someone who relies on statistics alone to support an opinion. As the Scottish poet Andrew Lang pointed out – statistics are used

“…as a drunken man uses a lamp-post: for support rather than illumination.”

Records are made to be broken. There are no peaks without troughs. What goes up, must come down. The river keeps flowing.

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

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On Comets & Collisions; Serendipity & Irony

Consider Eugene Shoemaker. The man who formulated the idea that sudden geologic change can result from asteroid strikes. Having spent his life examining ancient craters on the Earth’s surface, he postulated that they were formed by the impact of asteroids, and were not the remains of volcanoes – as was commonly believed.

He theorized that these collisions could not only have a devastating geological and climatic impact, but that they were relatively frequent.

Imagine the odds, then, of Shoemaker (along with his wife, and amateur astronomist Levy) not only discovering a comet, but that the self-same comet would slam into Jupiter a year later – handily providing indisputable visual evidence for his theory.

That’s serendipity for you.

The irony is that Shoemaker was killed in a two-vehicle, head-on collision, on the crest of a blind rise, on a deserted road near Alice Springs.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shoemaker was looking for asteroid craters in the Australian outback – one of the least-populated places on Earth…

What has this got to do with Arsenal, you ask?

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Quid Pro Quo (on Quids and Pros)

Well… As much as we would like to believe that the Beautiful Game is predictable – a quid pro quo affair – the truth is, that there are a myriad of miniscule and seemingly unconnected events that can have massive consequences on the (mis)fortune of a club.

Take for example, Arsenal’s adventures in the recent transfer window:

IF we’d immediately signed Higuaín, we probably wouldn’t have been in the market for Suaréz. IF we hadn’t been misinformed about Suaréz’s release clause, consequently pissing off Liverpool by bidding £40m+1 for a dental mental, we mightn’t have wasted so much time on a dead-end bid.

But because the music was about to end, and we were still standing there, chairless, with a stuffed wallet and a desperate need to buy someone – anyone! – we ended up with Özil.

Likewise – we’re in the market for a defensive midfielder, who knows the Arsenal Way, and isn’t too expensive… Who to choose? :-/

Flamini meenie miny mo…

Without the benefit of a crystal ball, we’ re basically a bunch of reactionary, ignorant twats. All of us. (With all due respect!) We’re either stuck in the rose-tinted, perfect past – wanting our Arsenal back – or we’re living in a future, imperfect because we’re making predictions that in most cases are wildly inaccurate.

All we succeed in doing is making the present tense.

So – probably due more to luck than design – we ended up being at the right place at the right time and landed two very big fish. We could just have easily hooked a couple of great big tyres to hang around our proverbial necks for 200 weeks. At £100k a week. Each.

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One Man’s Poison

Another delicious irony that I’d love to share with you: the fact that Spurs lost their Magnificent Monkey Boy to Real Madrid, selling him for gazillions of pounds due to the fact that the idiotic press had been blowing smoke up his (and their) ass for the entire season (at our expense); Madrid then had to offload a key player to make room (and pay for) the double-hand-job monster.

Spurs replace him with a six-pack of blahs, and we wind up with Özil. Talk about killing two birds with one stone…

Back To Butterflies…

Sometimes I like to imagine the tiny events that have such massive consequences:

Picture the Dutch cunt’s index finger, hovering above the “POST” button – as he prepares to publish his 2011 Independence Day fuck-you letter to ‘us guys’…

Knowing what you know now – are you sitting there on his shoulder, whispering “Do it! Do it! For the little boy inside of you, do it..! “? I know I am. Sure – he’s got his medal. But with every medal comes a Moyes. Suck it up, Robin.

Bitter? Moi? You fuckin’ betcha.

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That’s it for now. I feel much better now. It’s a bit like a spring-cleaning, this. Blog as enema.

Thanks for reading. Sorry I’ve been scarce. If you’ve got any comments – relevant or random – please leave them below – or look me up on Twitter: @invinciblog.